Chile, Mexico and U.S. are countries with most wealth inequality

Chile, Mexico and the U.S. are the developed countries with the highest rates of inequality, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in a report cited by Bloomberg News.

The OECD uses the Gini coefficient, a measure of household income to measure wealth distribution. Its value is zero in a country where everybody has the same income and 1 in a country where one person has all the income.

Chile has a Gini coefficients of 0.47, just ahead of Mexico at 0.46. The U.S. reading is 0.39. That compares to readings of 0.24 for Iceland, where inequality is the lowest, and 0.25 in Norway and Denmark, which rank second and third. Among Group of Seven countries, Germany and France have the lowest ratios, with readings of 0.29.

Across the developed world, the level of inequality remains near its highest since the 1980s, according to the Paris-based institution.

“Incomes at the bottom of the distribution are still well below pre-crisis levels while top and middle incomes have recovered much of the ground lost during the crisis,” the OECD said.